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Raising a Whole Child
Excerpt from Raising a Whole Child:
“I don’t know how to write a guidebook.
I can only tell you all the ways we tried to navigate every facet of life alongside autism – religion, adolescence, social media, online dating. Mealtimes, post-high school programs, medication, marriage.
I can only write about the way autism offered our family a newfound opportunity to reinvent ourselves. It brought us back to the basics; dinner around the table at night, dance parties in the playroom, adventures on Sunday afternoons.
I can only explain how we tried to stretch this boy Jack without breaking him. How, again and again, we stretched and nearly broke ourselves.
How we surrendered to a life we didn’t ask for, but we love all the same.
When it comes to autism, there is no instruction manual. There is no formula.
Nineteen years later, I rediscover this truth all the time.
There are only failed attempts, moments of mercy, offers of forgiveness, and the gritty determination to begin once more.
To me, good writing means you’ll see a piece of yourself inside my words.
Great writing, however, will infinitesimally change the way you live your own story.
Though I have no assumptions about where I fall on this sliding scale of letters to page, I offer them to you anyway.
Take what you need. Leave the rest.
Perhaps you’ll feel validated, curious, upset, confused, hopeful.
I hope you’ll read about something we tried – timers at the dinner table, emotional thermometers taped on the wall, couples’ counseling when we felt like we were becoming unmoored – and you’ll try it yourself.
And maybe you or your kiddo or your marriage will inch just the smallest bit forward. Ten more minute in a restaurant, a meltdown that was shorter than the last, stolen kisses in the hallway.
And you’ll share this tiniest piece of yourself to another mother, sister, father, husband.
After all, one story begets another.
All we can do is learn from each other.
All we have is each other.
It’s getting dark now, as the sun begins its descent into the dusky night. In a few minutes, I’ll get up and head into the kitchen to make dinner. It was always one of his favorite rituals, this boy of mine.
People ask me how we let him go. How we untethered ourselves in order to give him a chance at a more independent life.
I never have a good answer for these questions. All I can say is every time it rains, I wonder if his own sky is metallic with clouds. And I hope he remembers his umbrella.”
To learn more about how we conquered the dinner table, got through puberty, and found our son’s program after high school, subscribe for a free pdf of the book!
